


transience

by badacts



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 08:48:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7611472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badacts/pseuds/badacts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s the second Neil stops waiting to fall into a downward spiral in his fifth year that he completely loses his mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	transience

**Author's Note:**

> This is cross-posted from tumblr! [Come hang with me there.](http://badacts.tumblr.com/)
> 
> For the prompt 'things you said that made me feel like shit'.

It’s the second Neil stops waiting to fall into a downward spiral in his fifth year that he completely loses his mind.

It’s just – they’re one game off the end of the fall season and the Foxes need a high-differential win to secure a top-four finish in the district. Neil has got through some rough patches during his captaincy, but he’s never had any doubt since his freshman year that they would make spring championships. Not until now, with his green striker subs and without his iron-cast senior defensive line, without Andrew at his back.

They’re improving, but not fast enough. It’s everywhere in the media that without Kevin, the Foxes are failing, and that Neil is the one to blame.

They’re right. Neil knows it. Worse, every other Fox knows it, too. Kevin is ringing him once a week in his attempt to solve the problem before Neil gets both of them written and Jean off by Ichirou. Robin looks at him like he’s a bomb about to go off. Even Wymack, who is usually a neutral force, sometimes gets a concerned expression when he looks at Neil.

So he has been pouring all his time into extra practices, and none of it into studying. He knows that his grades are even more abysmal than usual, and he knows that he has exams coming up, even if he isn’t doing any schoolwork or absorbing anything in class. At this point he’s looking at academic probation even if the Foxes do make it into championships.

It’s, objectively, bad. It’s just that he’s kind of managing to pretend like it isn’t, until he fucks things up with Andrew as well.

They’ve been doing the long distance thing for a while now, with Andrew based in New York City with the Flyers. There are already whispers of his US Court selection in the press. Neil gets a thrill every time he reads the name Andrew Minyard in conjunction with Court.

Nothing about being so far apart has been easy. Hence, Neil’s expectation of his own meltdown. He’s flown out there once and he and Andrew have met in Columbia twice, but other than that they’ve relied on irregular phone calls around both of their schedules. Four years together has forged an understanding between them, but there’s a strain there even if it’s never addressed.

It’s one of those phone calls. Neil is ranting to Andrew about his decision to go away over Christmas break rather than staying for more training with the team members who aren’t going home. Neil is meant to fly to NYC and meet Andrew, a trip he’s been looking forward to for months.

It’s not that he _wants_ to stay. It’s just that he can’t quite shake the thought that if he leaves, there isn’t going to be a space for him to come back to.

He’s winding his way towards trying to say that when Andrew interrupts him to say, “Then don’t bother.”

Neil grinds to a halt. “What?”

“No one is making you do anything, Neil. If you don’t want to come, then don’t bother.”

His tone is calm – not accusatory, not even irritated. That doesn’t mean much, and Neil knows it. Andrew wouldn’t have said anything unless he was annoyed.

Afterwards, he isn’t sure what he says to that. Andrew doesn’t hang up on him immediately, so it can’t be terrible. It feels like he utilises every rigid muscle in his body to force out what he does say, in place of the brain cells he should actually be using.

The words _don’t bother_ ring in his ears after they say goodbye. He’s still hearing them hours later when he should be asleep, except that they’ve turned into _don’t come_ , or, his personal favourite, _you aren’t wanted_.

He’s still awake feeling his skin crawl when his alarm goes off.

The day doesn’t improve after that. Kevin calls again, with his usual blunt probing. Neil hangs up on him. Two of the juniors and a freshman get into a brawl in afternoon practice that threatens to involve the entire team. Wymack screams at them and sends them back to the dorm with firm orders to get their shit in order, sounding more frustrated than he has in a long time.

Neil finds himself alone in the suite with the walls crushing in on him. He wants to run. He doesn’t have anywhere to run to. Even the house in Columbia feels off limits, despite the weeks he’s spent there since Andrew gave him the key.

He takes a bottle of booze to bed, instead. He had to pick up bad habits from Kevin eventually.

The first morning he gets up and goes to practice without a flinch. If his head aches a bit, it’s a good reason to keep his temper under wraps; yelling would only make it worse. And _that’s_ a good reason to do it all over again.

The second, he’s slow, enough so that Wymack calls him out on it. That doesn’t help – he drives himself harder in the afternoon, but when he can’t sleep that night he picks up the bottle again. Enough to make him drowsy, and a little more after that.

The third day, he wakes up with a panic attack so bad Robin nearly calls Abby. Apparently, she reads off her phone, alcohol can increase symptoms of anxiety. Neil barely hears that over the sound of his own pathetic retching. He doesn’t have a hangover, not really. It’s the panic turning his stomach.

It’s enough that Robin shouts him down about practice, insisting that he doesn’t go or she’ll set Wymack and Betsy on him. She would, too. For that reason, he gets back into bed and stares at the top of the bunk overhead until his brain shuts down and he can finally sleep.

When he wakes he’s dehydrated and overheated, but not convinced he’s about to suffocate on oxygen. He also isn’t alone.

“You’re a fucking disaster.”

Neil attempts to open his eyes, but they’re gummed shut. Extracting a hand from the blankets to rub his face fails because he’s entangled himself so badly.  A second pair of hands frees him, more briskly than he really appreciates.  He feels as fragile and dry as a mummified corpse, too delicate to be touched.             

“What the fuck else is new,” he mutters, in a voice that sounds like he gargled gravel.

“The self-pity is,” Andrew replies. “Get up.”

Neil does so, shuffling to the bathroom without looking at him. He turns on the shower and climbs straight in under the cold water, fully clothed.

The door clicks closed, and Andrew says, “Jesus fuck, Josten.”

“Fuck off, then,” Neil snarls, somehow finding the energy to infect his tone with poison. He wrenches the shower curtain closed and starts to pull off his clothes – armbands, t-shirt, sweats. He ignores the door opening and closing again in favour of turning the water from frigid to scalding.

When he climbs out, his skin flushed bright red from heat, he finds Andrew has left him a pile of clean clothes on the vanity. He jerks them on, barely noting that they’re a variation on what he’d already been wearing. Andrew clearly isn’t planning on dragging him out of the dorms, then.

He isn’t in the bedroom when Neil emerges. He’s perched on his old desk – Robin’s, now – in the lounge, smoking with the window wide. Neil’s gaze flicks to the clock. It’s 4pm; the Foxes will be partway through their afternoon practice. He’s slept through most of the day. He feels like he could go for longer, too.

“Did Robin talk to you?” he asks, his voice still brutal.

“Your new drinking habit didn’t go unnoticed, if that’s what you were thinking,” Andrew replies, gaze steady.

“It’s been a couple of days. That’s not a habit.”

“Apparently it’s been three, and it’s a notable divergence from your usual behaviour. You couldn’t have saved the breakdown for a couple of weeks?”

“What do you care,” Neil says, his jaw clenched.

Andrew doesn’t reply to that. His gaze does that well enough without him having to open his mouth.

“If seeing me is so terrible, then why didn’t you just stay in New York?” Neil is digging himself a hole, inexorably and inescapably, his voice operating without input from his brain. Not that it matters – his brain is still murmuring _you aren’t wanted you aren’t wanted_ with awful insistence.

“I was going to change the flights so I came here instead. That way you could satisfy your obsession with forcing your useless underclassmen through drills on Christmas day all you liked. But I changed my mind,” Andrew replies, stopping Neil cold.

Before he can really start to panic, Andrew goes on, “I’m staying here until your exams are done, and then you’re coming north with me.”

Andrew is the starting goalkeeper on a professional team, and his break runs pretty much alongside Neil’s. He’ll be missing practices if he stays here for the next ten days. Seeing as Andrew knows that, Neil doesn’t bother saying it.

He says instead, “You’re the one who told me not to bother.”

“And you’re the one having a meltdown to rival any of Kevin Day’s,” Andrew replies. “If you really want to stay here, be my guest. But I don’t think you want to.”

Neil deflates like a punctured balloon. “I thought-”

“I know what you thought. Sit over there. You’re too stupid to share air with.”

Neil, obligingly, sits down on the couch. Andrew finishes his cigarette, then lights another and smokes that one too. By the time he’s done, Neil is sunk back into the cushions with his eyes closed.

He hears Andrew get up, followed by rattling from the kitchen units. He walks too quietly to track, but something cold bumps against Neil’s hand. When he looks, Andrew is holding a Gatorade out to him.

“I poured out your shitty whiskey,” he says, which is somewhat ironic, considering his own drinking habits. Neil takes the bottle and gulps half of it, ignoring the way the taste makes his tetchy stomach resist. Andrew takes the cushion next to him, not close enough to touch.

It takes Neil a moment to realise that the distance is for his benefit, not Andrew’s. “You can-” He stops, not quite able to actually say he’s fine with Andrew being closer when he might be told that it’s Andrew who isn’t interested in being near him after all.

That pause earns him a level-eyed stare. “Yes or no, Neil.”

“Yes.”

And no matter what else, Andrew’s hand at his nape is an anchor, pinning his flesh back to his bones when it wants to crawl off. Neil breathes and feels his heart steady in his chest.


End file.
